••• “Last night, Graffiti owner Jehangir Mehta hosted an intimate tasting for his soon to open restaurant in Tribeca Mehtaphor [in the Duane Street Hotel, right]. According to a tipster, he served, among other dishes, crab ‘pizza’ a la his zucchini pizza at Graffiti, shrimp ceviche, and oysters topped with grapefruit confit and Pop Rocks. He is hoping to open the restaurant next Wednesday.” (Eater)

••• Curbed discovered more renderings of Park51. (Sleuthy!) They’re not that interesting, actually, but one is labeled “Location: Ground Zero,” which is frustrating.

••• “Deeply troubled Anglo Irish Bank Corp. is close to achieving a modest victory in Manhattan. The bank is expected to soon set the date for the foreclosure auction for all the unsold units of beleaguered developer Yair Levy’s failed condo conversion, Rector Square in Battery Park City. The 232 units, along with the parking garage and commercial space in the residential tower, located at 225 Rector Pl., will be auctioned off in a bulk sale on Nov. 17.” (Crain’s)

••• The New York Times reviews Office Hours at the Flea: “A.R. Gurney resurrects the culture clash over dead white males in his latest play, ‘Office Hours,’ a wispy but congenial comedy structured as a series of tutorials tied to classical literature’s greatest hits.”

••• “The developer of the planned Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero hopes to finance the bulk of the $140 million project using instruments developed to allow many Muslim investors to comply with religious prohibitions on interest. The developer, Sharif el-Gamal, […] is counting on the center’s eventually having about 4,330 paying members, about half of them paying $2,700 a year for the most expensive family plan, which would include use of a planned fitness center and pool. Most of that core group, Mr. Gamal expects, would be non-Muslim neighborhood residents and commuters.” (New York Times)

••• “After 50 years in Tribeca, sculptor Mardig Kachian is leaving the neighborhood for Brooklyn and put his 7-9 Harrison St. building [left] on the market with no listing price. The 33,500-square-foot, 24-unit building, which also has a retail floor and a cellar, could be redeveloped or converted into a town house or an apartment building.” (Crain’s; longer article in the NYT)

••• Actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who is a partner in the Tribeca Grill, is planning a cooking show. (Toronto Sun)

••• T Magazine talks to designer Renate Müller: “This fall, […] R 20th Century will mount the first North American retrospective of her work.”

••• An interview with Jessimae Peluso, comedienne and bartender at Puffy’s. (CNY Link)

••• “Should we exclude the fashion, home, and food sections of the New York Times from our exercises in bogus-trend-spotting because so much of what passes as fashion, home, and food journalism is bogus to begin with? Or should we, like the Old Testament God, unleash our fury on these counterfeit pieces, rip out their entrails with our bare hands, and feed them to wild dogs? [Get a life. —Ed.] The Times thrusts this moral question on us today with the top story in its Thursday Styles section: ‘Heels on Wheels: These daring young women, in their stylish attire, are turning heads as they roll by.'” (Slate)

••• Up close and personal with the 20×24 Polaroid camera at 20×24 Studios. Man I’d love a shot of my dog partner with that thing. (The Phoblographer)

Dan Colen photographed by Marley Kate, courtesy BlackBook. (Apologies for the, um, vividness of it—but one reader often complains that I never run pix of naked men.)

••• BlackBook profiles artist Dan Colen: “Boxes and boxes of gum, meticulously ordered by brand and flavor, sit on a table at the entrance to Dan Colen’s Tribeca studio: Big League Chew, Dentyne, Doublemint, Eclipse, Excel, Extra, Hubba Bubba, Juicy Fruit, Trident. The air inside his high-ceilinged workspace is thick with the cloying smell of artificial fruit flavors. A small army of assistants busy themselves in front of wall-size canvasses covered with smears of boiled gum. Diamond-shaped metal studs, placed perfectly to form a light-reflecting grid, envelop an unfinished piece near the back of the room. Brightly-colored bursts of confetti have been applied to a few of the canvasses, dirt and grass stains to others.